Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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What are your predictions for the odyssey ? Will it bomb, will it flourish, will it be meh? What it has going on for it are Nolan, star studded cast, one of the greatest adventure tales ever told. On the other hand for every Dark Knight in his career, Nolan has produced a Dark Knight Rises and all of his movies are one hour longer than needed. The casting has definitely some strange and odd choices. And whether there is appetite for mythical destruction in the public after massive woke coded fantasy and other flops in the last few years remains to be seen.
Personally I will probably skip it, unless invited by some extremely hot chick. After so much culture warring - I just can't get excited for the big Hollywood productions anymore.
I saw it yesterday and I liked it a lot. It's definitely not perfect and I can see certain things that could ruin it for people, but overall I think if you enjoy Christopher Nolan films in general, you will enjoy this one. I'll try to say some things about it without spoilers.
Two major things I could see ruining it for some Mottizens and why they didn't ruin it for me:
Culture war. My impression is the culture war nonsense is pretty superficial, so for me personally it didn't bother me too much. Okay, race swapping Helen is silly, but I don't feel like the culture war stuff affected the interpretation and the themes of the story. I feel like Nolan genuinely had a vision for this film that doesn't have much to do with the culture war du jour. I didn't get the idea that this is some conscious progressive subversion of the original story at all. I think all of the actors that were complained about beforehand as diversity hires, did a fine job or at least not a bad enough job to ruin the film for me. In terms of less superficial stuff, the only culture stuff that popped into my mind while watching the film had to do with the fact that the theme of hospitality plays a major role in the film, which it also does in the book btw. There was a line or two where I was thinking, maybe they want me to think about immigration or something in relation to this hospitality stuff, but if that's the case, the film is sending a very ambiguous message about it and not just pandering to progressive culture war memes. Honestly, the fact I was thinking about immigration culture war here might well be culture war brainrot on my side.
If you are a history nerd and care a lot about adaptations being super faithful to the books and historically accurate and such, there is probably a lot to get hung up on in this film. All of the armor and boats and stuff have nothing to do with Bronze Age Greek stuff. There are some shots in flashbacks of Agamemnon in armor at Troy and frankly he looks more like batman than like anything authentically Greek. For me it probably helped somewhat that I only read parts of the Odyssey like 15 years ago or something during Ancient Greek lessons in high school. I had some overall familiarity with the story, but when something surprising happened to me I couldn't be sure if this is some detail that I haven't read or forgotten about or whether this was a deviation from the source material. There are one or two hamfisted interpretations/themes in there where I thought it would have been better if he didn't spell it out as much as he does. On the other hand some Nolanisms were actually incorporated skillfully in harmony with the source material. Nolan always plays around with time and non-linear storytelling, but the original source material is also somewhat non-linear, so that actually worked surprisingly well.
I think those are the two major things I think could ruin the film for some people who are sensitive to those issues. Now onto two things I really liked.
When we compare it to the 2004 Troy film, one massive difference in which Nolan is much more faithful to the source material: it includes a bunch of supernatural stuff. If you've ever read a fragment of Homer, you will know that the gods aren't vague background things, they are very much actively involved in the story. Honestly, if anything, we probably should have had even more and more direct involvement of the gods than Nolan gives us, but I think Nolan gives us about as much gods as modern Western audiences can handle without it becoming goofy.
The characters at times behaved not at all like modern westerns. That is to say, while some influence of contemporary morality and values that we all take for granted is impossible to avoid in something like this, otherwise the film would probably be completely unwatchable for modern audiences, there is a degree of violence and brutality that is at least somewhat trying to represent the original Bronze Age story, rather than sanitizing everything for modern audiences.
Overall, if you're so fed up with culture stuff that you immediately rage-quite when you see a silly raceswap even if it is somewhat superficial and doesn't affect the underlying story, you are probably not going to enjoy this film. Otherwise, if you enjoy other Nolan films, I can recommend seeing it. It isn't perfect, but I personally enjoyed it a lot.
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